A Running Mate for Bernie?

Still feeling awful but trying hard to get around to visit y'all. (Pain hurts!)  I spent over two hours transcribing this for those of you who prefer text.  Typing one-handed is not easy! Please forgive any errors


I think I found a running mate for Bernie Sanders!




"Mr. Speaker, almost no one in Washington is talking about jobs. For two months now both chambers of Congress have been locked down in talking about the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, if you take a look at the Bush years, America lost almost 8 million jobs in the largest recession since the Great Depression and we've only gotten back about 2 million -- 2 million, creating jobs at a rate of 120,000 a month. That is far from where we need to head.

But rather than this Congress engage in intelligent dialogue on how to create jobs, we keep going down these side roads to nowhere -- to no where. Meanwhile unemployment just went up another 10,000 jobs. Every member in both chambers will be judged on not doing the work that the people want us to do. And that is to focus on how to use the power of the federal government to create jobs If you take a look at what the Republican majority in the House wants to do, they want to cut unemployment benefits. That's not even understandable to any rational person. They want to cut food.

I invite any one of them to come to my district. Come and stand in the food lines. See how it feels. Better yet, help us pack some of the bags and then distribute them and give them to veterans who are coming home from the wars who don't have jobs. Then ask yourself, "What are you really doing here?" "What are you doing here?"

What about health benefits for people who have fallen out of work and they don't have anymore benefits for their family? Why should we cut there? Some people like to proclaim proudly about being pro-life. Pro-life doesn't only involve the period before a child is born; it involves the entire life of a person -- a human being -- until natural death. These are philosophical questions that our members ought to be asking themselves about helping the American people at this critical point in our history.

Now, all of us want to produced balanced budgets. When you have full employment, you have balanced budgets and you get extra; you can pay down your long-term. You don't hear anything up here being talked about jobs. If it were happening, we'd have more job creation. We have less job creation. More people are going on unemployment benefits so the conversation is totally off base.

Let's just look at one sector where America and federal government could save money. America spends almost 250 billion dollars on prescription drugs and nearly a third of that is paid for my the federal government which means our people paying taxes -- when they work!

Let's look at that pharmaceutical industry. Now some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say: "Cut Social Security! Cut Medicare!" They don't talk about trimming the excess profits of the pharmaceutical companies and you know what? They're not paying their fair share into the federal till!

Let's just look at one bag of Heperin (sp?) in a hospital for which Medicare winds up paying $600. $600!!!!!!

(More about how the pharmaceutical companies are -- and subsequently, us -- raping our government omitted).

Why doesn't the federal use it's purchasing power to get better bids on these drugs and have competitive bidding in order to purchase? We did that in the 1990s; we haven't done it since. There's plenty of ways to get the funds to try to balance the budget but the most important way is to help Americans back to work."


Happy Blogging!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kay